ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates an open question why the case that the construction of many social insurance systems, including the parental leave system, to a large extent excludes students, at least in Sweden. It investigates how an increase to the minimum parental leave benefit might affect fertility behaviour. The chapter gives some stylized facts concerning the development of fertility and education. It clarifies the key mechanisms between our main variables of interest, in particular the parental leave benefits and the fertility decision. The chapter presents the results from our simulations. Although matching is an ideal application for ABM, the chapter focuses on the fertility behaviour and for this reason matching is treated simplistically. The chapter also presents the results that let the model first run for 100 years to level off, and looks at the average for the following 50 years to analyse the variables of interest.
